A fun spin on serious cosmic stuff! Wendell C. Perry has 40 years experience studying astrology and how it impacts personalities & relationships. He's written two books & published articles in astrology magazines. He's happy to share this website so that you, too, can have fun with astrology to help you in everyday life!

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17 June 2016

Saturn Square Neptune and Violence

Back in November, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, I wrote about the square aspect that was approaching at that time between Saturn and Neptune. (Click here to see that article.) I also noted that the aspect would be coming back around in June of 2016. However, I did not predict that we would have another violent incident like the one that occurred in Orlando. Obviously, I was being too optimistic.

Saturn and Neptune are not planets that we typically associate with violence. Saturn is the great the time-keeper of the zodiac. It judges, disciplines, restricts and confronts us with practical realities. Neptune is the planet of spirituality and creativity. On the lighter side, it also rules pop culture, glamour and diversions of all sorts. But the main thing that Neptune represents in context with its current aspect with Saturn is compassion.

Compassion, as it comes to us from Neptune, is without bounds. It is a compassion that reaches out to everyone, and particularly to the unfortunate, the injured and the outsiders. The square to Saturn forces us to submit that amorphous love of humanity to the restrictions of practicality. We have to make judgments, establish limitations and draw back.

All of these things are evident in what is going on in Europe right now with regard to the Syrian refugees. Practical concerns are stifling compassion. It has also played a part in the rise of Donald Trump, a candidate who seems to be telling us that compassion is for wimps. However, when this restriction of compassion strikes certain individuals, individuals with troubled minds and violence in their hearts, bad things happen.

All of these incidents have to do with people making judgments through Saturn. In the case of the Orlando shooter and the man who murdered the British M.P., those judgments were badly skewed by delusion and hatred. The judgment of the people urging the president to go to war in Syria is certainly more sensible, grounded as it is in the fact that the Assad is a murderous monster, but arguments against such an intervention are no less sound.

We are all going to be dealing with judgments like this, in one way or another, while this aspect is in force (which it will be, more or less, until mid-September.) We will have to decide how much we can afford to care about other people and social causes. Sometimes those limitations will be appropriate, and sometimes they will be too restrictive. It all depends on whether they are inspired by necessity or fear.

As for the prospect for more violence, that always has to be a concern when we have a big, angular aspect dominating the sky. The world is full of miserable people, and it is also full of guns and other implements of destruction. That’s a combination that can have only one end. Still, I going to try and hold on to my optimism and hope that, in Paris and Orlando, we already seen the worst of Saturn square Neptune.